evidence

Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

n. A thing or things helpful in forming a conclusion or judgment: The broken window was evidence that a burglary had taken place. Scientists weigh the evidence for and against a hypothesis.

n. Something indicative; an outward sign: evidence of grief on a mourner's face.

n. Law The documentary or oral statements and the material objects admissible as testimony in a court of law.

transitive v. To indicate clearly; exemplify or prove.

transitive v. To support by testimony; attest.

idiom in evidence Plainly visible; to be seen: It was early, and few pedestrians were in evidence on the city streets.

idiom in evidence Law As legal evidence: submitted the photograph in evidence.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

n. Facts or observations presented in support of an assertion.

n. Anything admitted by a court to prove or disprove alleged matters of fact in a trial.

v. To provide evidence for, or suggest the truth of.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English

n. That which makes evident or manifest; that which furnishes, or tends to furnish, proof; any mode of proof; the ground of belief or judgement

n. One who bears witness.

n. That which is legally submitted to competent tribunal, as a means of ascertaining the truth of any alleged matter of fact under investigation before it; means of making proof; -- the latter, strictly speaking, not being synonymous with evidence, but rather the effect of it.

transitive v. To render evident or clear; to prove; to evince.

from The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

To make evident or clear; show clearly; prove.

To attest or support by evidence or testimony; witness.

n. The state of being evident, clear, or plain, and not liable to doubt or question; evidentness; clearness; plainness; certitude. See mediate and immediate evidence, etc., below.

n. The means by which the existence or non-existence or the truth or falsehood of an alleged fact is ascertained or made evident; testimony; witness; hence, more generally, the facts upon which reasoning from effect to cause is based; that which makes evident or plain; the experiential premises of a proof.

n. Specifically, in law: A deed; an instrument or document by which a fact is made evident: as, evidences of title (that is, title-deeds); evidences of debt (that is, written obligations to pay money).

n. One who supplies testimony or proof; a witness: now used chiefly in the phrase “turning state's (or queen's) evidence.”

n. Information, whether consisting of the testimony of witnesses or the contents of documents, or derived from inspection of objects, which tends, or is presented as tending, to make clear the fact in question in a legal investigation or trial; testimony: as, he offered evidence of good character.

n. In a more restricted sense, that part of such information or testimony which is properly receivable or has actually been received by the court on the trial of an issue: sometimes more specifically characterized as judicial evidence: as, that is not evidence, my lord; the age of the accused is not in evidence. In this latter sense sometimes, especially in equity practice, spoken of as the proofs.

n. The rules by which the reception of testimony is regulated in courts of justice: as, a treatise on evidence; professor of pleading and evidence.

n. Plainly visible; conspicuous: a recent phraseadopted from the French en evidence.

n. Testimony to having witnessed an act or event, as distinguished from negative evidence, or the testimony of a witness who was present and observant, that such act or event did not take place. As between equally credible witnesses, positive testimony is entitled to more weight than negative, because it may be that one witness, though present, did not see or hear that which another witness did.

n. Evidence sufficient not only to go to the jury, but to require them to find accordingly if no credible contrary evidence be given.

If there are any who imagine, that positive and direct evidence is absolutely necessary to conviction, they are much mistaken; it is a mistake, I believe, very common with those who commit offences: they fancy that they are secure because they are not seen at the moment; but you may prove their guilt as conclusively, perhaps even more satisfactorily, by _circumstantial evidence_, as by any _direct evidence_ that can possibly be given.